


Curls

by bibliomaniac



Series: Hair (Or, How It All Went Wrong And Then Got Better) [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Multi, Mutual Pining, and this isn't a required end to the two previous, but that's sort of to be expected with balance i think, in which i shamelessly abuse and misuse the humble paranthesis, is there a word for mutual when its in threes, previous two aren't required reading for this, taz balance spoilers in a major way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-03-17 07:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13653861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliomaniac/pseuds/bibliomaniac
Summary: Barry's hair is boring: brown, short, and curly. It never changes. He prefers it like that, just like he prefers not to be noticed, to let his work speak for itself. Largely because he doesn't really want to do the speaking thing.His hair doesn't change, but he does.[aka i continue my strange hair metaphor series but this time with 100% more ship, both in the romantic and starblaster senses, and also this time we go back to the beginning but from barry's pov]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ok i debated with myself for a long time about whether to reveal my secret weakness for barry/lup/lucretia (not that i haven't been hinting at it for a while lol) but in the end im doing it anyway because i am as always nothing if not self-indulgent. also, because i really wanted to write something from barry's pov for some reason. so here we are
> 
> cw for quick bullying mention and self-deprecation

Barry’s hair has been more or less the same since he can remember. Curly, kept cut just above his ears and just past his nape, and brown. Boring, really, but he’s never been one for flash anyway. The quieter he keeps the more likely it is that he can slip by unnoticed. That’s how he prefers it. Getting noticed has never gotten him anywhere, except for standing down the occasional bully who thought they could get away with beating him up (they couldn’t, but he’d prefer not to repeat the experience), or maybe defending his choice of clothing in front of a teacher (his family never had money for anything fancy, but he’ll maintain that he just really, _really_ likes jeans to his grave. Literally, as it turns out. And jeans are comfortable anyway, so it’s fine.)

He does very much want to get noticed by the IPRE, but obviously changing his hair isn’t the way to do that. He’ll let his academic prowess and his independent research speak for him there. He’s not really one to brag, either, but he knows he’s smart, and he knows he’ll be accepted long before the Institute’s representative knocks on his family’s front door and tells him so. Some things you just know like that: without rhyme or reason, really, just a little tap on the shoulder from the universe saying, hey, this is what you’re meant to do.

Knowing he’s meant to be in the IPRE and actually navigating the mechanics of being in it are a bit different, though. Not the academics, of course, not the research; that’s always been where he excelled. But things like where to sit in the mess hall, and who to ask when there’s a partner exercise in physical training… that can’t be _studied,_ it has to be learned through experience and presumably some natural genetic ability to talk to other people that the gods sure as hell didn’t grant Barry. 

(As it turns out, they don’t stop recruits from taking food outside the mess to the garden benches, and when recruits blithely offer to animate a corpse to help them with their pairs exercises, they leave them well alone after that, especially when the aforementioned hypothetical recruit calls out after them, “Are you sure? There’s a graveyard nearby, it wouldn’t be any trouble.” Barry wouldn’t actually have _done_ it, _obviously,_ but he knows he has a reputation, and he’s not afraid to use it to get himself out of bad situations.) 

It’s a year after he first came to the IPRE, now less a recruit and more a salaried member of the arcane R&D department, that rumors start to swirl about a pair of twins. Barry finds it difficult to tell from the rumors whether people like them or are terrified by them. Maybe both? He doesn’t take much stock in rumors, certainly doesn’t keep an ear out for them, but he is vaguely interested in what he does hear—one of them is incredibly good at transmutation, and the other is a rising star in the field of evocation. Not really his style, either of those, but he’s intrigued anyway. Maybe they could talk shop sometime. Probably not, though.

The first time he sees them, it’s in the gym for his mandatory monthly physical eval. They’re dressed in complementary-but-not-matching crop tops and shorts, so close to each other he wonders for a moment whether they might have been glued, and they’re whispering and gesturing in a way that makes it pretty obvious they’re whispering about people. Not to say nice things, he thinks. They’re almost otherworldly in their beauty, at least from what he can tell from their profiles, and they look aloof and cool and a bit scary. So. Probably both awe and terror, then, right. He’s about to look away when one of them, the one with hair down to her waist, looks at him.

He thinks his heart probably stops in the split second before he jerks his head to the side and very pointedly stares out the window. _Obvious,_ he chastises himself, _that’s not keeping a low profile at all_ , but the woman’s features linger in his head in a way that’s really quite distracting.

Equally distracting is the way that, a few minutes later, fingertips trail over his bicep, and when he looks over with a frown, he sees the woman, who grins wolfishly and murmurs, “Want a tip?” 

He blinks at her, flush spreading high up his cheekbones.

“If you’re staring at someone and they catch you, just keep staring. Either you get in a fight, they look away, or you get a date, but either way they can’t call you chicken.” She pats his cheek, almost condescending, and as she begins to move away, she throws over her shoulder, “That’s what I would’ve done if you had noticed _me_ staring at you _first,_ anyway.”

He chokes on air and begins coughing. Distantly, he hears her twin say, “Lup, really?”

“What? Am I not allowed to have fun?”

“With someone who wears denim to the _gym?_ ”

“I mean, you have to admire that kind of dedication to the aesthetic.”

“No, I really don’t,” the other one snorts, and then they’re far enough away that Barry can’t hear them anymore, which is a small mercy.

So. Yes. Awe, check, terror, a _resounding_ check. Lust—well, okay, he doesn’t need to go there, really.

(But yeah, check.)

 

* * *

 

 

Lucretia he doesn’t meet until a few months later. She’s not IPRE, just someone they’ve brought on for this mission, which they’re keeping pretty hush-hush at the moment. Or. Well. For people who weren’t part of outfitting the ship that's key to the mission’s success, and for people who weren’t among the first asked to be part of the mission. Barry is both of those, so he knows what the mission is, and he knows he could never do anything but accept the invitation to go. 

(Sometimes you just know.)

He watches with vague bemusement as Davenport collects the remaining members of the crew. It’s a unique bunch. Merle Highchurch, who’s an oddball even among the clerics, even among the clerics devoted to Pan, really, and they’re already known for being a bit odd. Magnus Burnsides, who’s definitely strong and very, very earnest and very, very charming, but is also quite young and doesn’t have much in the way of experience. Taako and Lup, which is—he’s not thinking about that now, and he hopes to continue not thinking about it for as long as possible, and he knows they’re both incredibly talented wizards, but they’re also loose cannons. And then Lucretia. He hasn’t met her yet, but he’s heard of her work. It’s slightly incomprehensible to him that they’re devoting an entire spot on a very small crew to a chronicler, but it’s not really his place to judge here.

When he first meets Lucretia properly, it’s in a conference room where they’re supposed to have their first meeting. She’s already in the room when he walks in, and he’s _early._ He blinks at the woman sitting ramrod straight on a chair. Interestingly enough, she doesn’t look like she’s sitting like she’s the poster child for an etiquette class because she’s nervous, just because that’s how she’s accustomed to sitting. Her hair is long and curly and a very dark brown, and she has a pair of reading glasses perched delicately on her nose, and she’s writing furiously in two large notebooks. At the same time. She’s also very pretty, which Barry thinks is kind of cosmically unfair, that the two women on this ship with him are so ridiculously beautiful. Probably the universe wants him to be uncomfortable and tripping on his words all the time. Not because he’s perving on them or anything, he’s not _like_ that, but because pretty people are in a whole different stratosphere from him and if he’s bad with interacting with _normal_ people, interacting with _beautiful_ people is pretty much impossible.

She looks up at him and smiles, something tight and a bit uncomfortable. “My apologies. I didn’t hear you come in.” Her speech is stilted and formal. He wonders briefly whether it’s just how she talks or whether she’s as lost in this situation as he is.

“It’s all right,” he replies, then shakes his head. “I…I mean, you don’t have anything to apologize for, like—it’s—it’s not, uh…it’s. Yeah. It’s all right.” Fuck.

She tilts her head at him, then smiles again, but a bit less forced this time. “You’re—Barry? Barry, um, Bluejeans, yes?” 

“Um. Yeah. You—how—bad question, Davenport, probably.”

She takes off the reading glasses, puts them in a case, then puts the case in her pocket. “Yes, he gave me descriptions of the other crew members so I wouldn’t feel too—out of place.” She clears her throat, back to looking uncomfortable.

“I probably shouldn’t ask what he used as my descriptor,” Barry jokes weakly, and the genuine smile is back when she gestures at his jeans. “Oh. Okay. Yeah. That’s fair.”

“He also mentioned your glasses and hair,” Lucretia offers, something a bit like an olive branch, and Barry nods. “Anyway, I’m—”

“Lucretia,” Barry supplies before he can stop himself. “Oh, uh—sorry, I’ve—seen everyone else before, so—process of elimination—but, yeah, you’re, uh. The chronicler?”

The smile freezes. “Mm. I’m also an abjuration specialist and something of an arcane research enthusiast, but, that’s—my primary role here, yes.”

Barry also freezes. “Oh, gods,” he mutters, running a hand through his hair. “I’m so sorry, I promise I didn’t mean to—uh—that was reductive, I’m—fuck. Sorry. I’m sure you are also very good at—it’s just the—” Weakly, he points at the journals, still flipped open.

Lucretia looks down, almost like she had forgotten, then chuckles. It’s a low, bright sound, and Barry sort of wants to figure out what else he can do to make her laugh again. _Fuck,_ no, okay. “All right. That’s also fair. Like the jeans situation.” She snaps shut the notebooks, and he jumps a bit at the sound, then flushes at how jumpy he’s being. Way to make a first impression, Barry. “I have to admit, I’m curious whether the name has any bearing on your personal fashion choices, or—”

“Nickname,” he cuts her off. “It stuck, and I like it better than my old one.”

She looks almost like she’s considering apologizing, but instead she extends a hand. “Well, it’s a good name. Nice to meet you, Barry.”

And he takes her hand and shakes it, notices how her eyes sort of crinkle at the corners when she’s actually genuinely smiling, and thinks, _Fuck, this is definitely going to take some getting used to._

He’s right, too. It takes _years,_ nine entire cycles until he stops stuttering around her and Lup and generally making an ass of himself. Mostly. But we’re not there yet. 

Right now, it is the press conference the day before they leave, and he’s sitting in an uncomfortable chair and trying to make himself as small as possible to counterweight how he’s in an ostentatious red uniform (which had been handed to them in the waiting room just before this; it’s similar to the IPRE uniform, but the red is new) at the front of a room with a bunch of reporters. All of this is sort of antithetical to pretty much everything he’s _about,_ his whole slipping-by-unnoticed thing, and he sort of wants to wink out of existence—should have learned Blink, that would be an _excellent_ spell to know right now—and just not be here right now in this exact moment. Davenport passes the ball to him, though, and he winces a bit before getting up there. And, okay, yes, he _absolutely_ knows he’s rambling, but this is an exciting subject, and—

Lup clears her throat and whispers, a bit too loud to not be going for audible, “Nerd alert!”

Barry feels himself shriveling up and dying. This is it. He goes bright red and mumbles, “Um. I’m just excited about the opportunity to get out there and find the new things to—to study—it’s just really exciting.” Then he slinks back to his chair where he can die undisturbed. Gods, he’s not going to make it an entire _day,_ clearly, much less a year.

He sits up a bit straighter when Lucretia goes up, as a show of support—they’ve only met maybe three times by this point, all in team meetings, but he knows enough about her to pick up that she’s nervous right now— though he notices that she doesn’t say anything about the abjuration or research to the reporters. That’s okay. Maybe it’s good she cares more about making a good impression on her coworkers than reporters.

Lup seems to care about the same amount about making a good impression on the reporters as she does her coworkers, which is to say not at all. She hadn’t even remembered him, that first team meeting a few weeks ago. Which is…besides the point. But she makes an _impression,_ to be sure. He also knows the twins well enough by now to know that that’s sort of their thing.

She drops the mic, Davenport cringes, and then they pack up the conference and have a debriefing, and then everybody leaves. Except for Barry. And Davenport, too, he has too much invested in this mission to not be doing last checks on the ship, but Barry mostly just needs some time to wind down from all of today, and so it is that he spends the last evening on his home world in the lab. It’s wholly unremarkable, is what he’ll think later. A kind of terrible tribute to an entire life lived. But it’s not like he knew what would happen, either. None of them did.

 

* * *

 

 

A storm brews overhead as he sleeps, face pressed into the pencil he had been using to jot down a few last-minute calculations, and he doesn’t know a damn thing other than how it feels to have an indentation of a fantasy #2 Dixon Ticonderoga in his forehead, and _that’s_ something he learned a long time ago.

He’s on the ship early the next morning, so early even Lucretia’s not there yet, and he feels a bit of a pang of loneliness at the thought. Davenport is probably getting breakfast—he’s a very three meals kind of guy—but even though he’s likely nearby, Barry feels very much for a moment like he’s alone. And it doesn’t last, it never does—Davenport gets there, then Lucretia then Magnus then Taako and Lup and then for some ungodly reason Merle, ten minutes past the time they were supposed to leave—and then he’s not physically alone anymore, but the distance is still there a bit.

But that won’t last either, because the Hunger attacks, even if they don’t have a name for it yet, and the Starblaster flees, and Barry is torn apart in a thousand million billion different ways and—when he’s stitched together again, everyone’s still there, and their world is gone.

But the crew, Davenport and Merle and Magnus and Taako and Lup and Lucretia, they’ll still be there, at least for the next ninety-nine years, and the distance will feel like as much as a dream as the plane he spent twenty-six years living in.

(But like before, we’re not there yet. Right now, we’re on the deck of the Starblaster as it goes down and down and down, into a world that none of what remains of the IPRE can recognize, and he _knows_ , just as sure as he knew that the IPRE was the place for him, that nothing will be the same ever again.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for language, self-hatred, innuendo

There are a lot of moments that blend into each other when you remember a century’s worth of living and dying, a lot that gets lost, the sort of minutiae that even Lucretia didn’t think to write down or perhaps just didn't observe. That first day isn’t one of those, though. It stands out in sharp relief, the shock and despair and numbness that they feel when they realize everything is gone. None of them cry, at least not where anyone is around to see them. They just sort of stare at the forest below them, the green the same green they might have seen in any forest from their home but somehow still _wrong._

It’s Merle that breaks the silence first, diffusing the tension in a way that will become characteristic in the coming years. “Well, fuck,” he says, almost thoughtful.

Just like that, Magnus starts laughing a bit hysterically, and Lucretia murmurs “Aptly put,” then looks a bit surprised, like she hadn’t expected to say that out loud. Barry grins despite himself, in a way that will also become characteristic of how he reacts to the situations in which Lucretia showcases her surprisingly sharp wit and sense of humor.

Davenport huffs and says, “Merle, really.”

Taako shrugs with casual elegance. “He’s not wrong.”

“You can rarely go wrong with a well-timed fuck,” Lup says with a lascivious smile. Barry goes a bit pink, and that’s with him restraining himself. (This will be normal as well.) Lup notices—she’s _very_ observant, which he will come to know well but already has sort of picked up on—and her smile curves into something even more wicked. This time, though, he doesn’t look away, because he doesn’t want a repeat of the gym situation. She tilts her head at him, grin growing wider by the second, then, blessedly, seems to get distracted by something. Unfortunately, that something is apparently Lucretia, who is also blushing furiously.

 _Interesting_ , Barry notes, and also, _She looks good like that._

Okay. No. Bad.

It takes a while for everyone to fall into something approaching a rhythm after that. Not a comfortable one—there is no comfort in this situation—but one borne out of a dogged need to do _something._ Merle and Davenport leave to try and find the Light, and Magnus trains. Lucretia spends her time recording things with an energy that verges on frantic. Barry looks through a page of her notes once over her shoulder before she slams the book shut, looking up at him with wide eyes. 

“They’re very detailed,” he says, floundering for something to say. “Your notes.”

“Yes, well.” She pushes her reading glasses up her nose and looks away. “I didn’t—I never did anything like this at. You know. Home.” The last word comes out harsh, like it’s physically painful to say. “I had a journal, but I never took the time to write down things like—like the color of the sky, because that’s just how it _was._ The way a field of grass moved in the wind, or the way the light changed when the suns went down, or _anything_ important, I didn’t write any of it down, and now it’s all _gone._ ” Her fists clench and her eyes go fierce. What comes out next is sneering as her face twists. “An entire civilization lost, but at least posterity will know about my fucking _feelings._ ”

Barry stares at her as her breathing grows a bit less labored, as she struggles to regain equilibrium. His fingers twitch reflexively in a suppressed urge to pat her on the shoulder. Finally he just says, “I mean, I think you and your feelings are important too.” 

She huffs when she looks back at him, but there’s a hint of a smile on her face. “That’s very kind of you to say, but academically it doesn’t matter that nobody wanted to eat with me at lunch in school.”

He shrugs. “Maybe not. But it mattered to you, and that makes it important.” 

She shakes her head, gazing at her lap, but the smile is still there a bit.

“And anyway,” Barry continues, adjusting his own glasses as he looks off at a point in space contemplatively, “You’re not responsible for what happened. That thing destroyed our world. You didn’t destroy it by not writing about grass. Not everything is your responsibility, Lucretia, and you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to twist things so they are. I think we think if things are our fault we can fix them, but—not this. It’s not Davenport’s fault for not going back, and it’s not Magnus’s fault for not fighting it, and it’s not Merle’s fault for not getting Pan to shine down holy light or whatever, and it’s not Lup’s fault for not blasting it to hell, and it’s not Taako’s fault for not—I don’t know, tentacle-ing it. It’s not my fault for not knowing it was coming. It’s not your fault for not spending your entire life writing things down instead of enjoying the time you had there. But. Even if it were one or all of our faults, it wouldn’t change anything _now.”_

His brain finally catches up with his mouth, and he realizes he’s probably said too much. Face heating, he scratches his neck. “Um. Or. Sorry, that’s—that’s what I think, but—it’s, uh—”

He accidentally looks back at Lucretia while he’s trying to look at a different point in space further away from her face, then pauses, brows knitting worriedly. She’s staring at him, eyes slightly luminous, and he takes a moment to parse, then blanches. “Oh! No no no no, don’t cry please! Or, I mean, if you need to cry then that's probably healthy and, like, it’s a rational response, you’re allowed to cry, but I don’t want to make you cry is what I mean, so cry, but not because of—that’s—oh gods that sounded like an order to cry I swear I didn’t—”

His hands are waving around wildly as he attempts to explain himself, and he’s so flustered that it takes him a moment to register that the slightly cool sensation on his wrist is Lucretia’s hand, and another moment to realize that she’s laughing. When he does, though, he freezes entirely, blush spreading from his cheeks down his neck.

She’s still laughing though, and saying, “Barry, breathe, I’m not going to cry.” 

“Cool,” he squeaks, and she seems to notice her hand is still on his wrist and hurriedly retracts it with a wince. 

“I just wanted to say—thank you, I suppose. I hadn’t really thought of myself as blaming any of this on me, but I guess I might have been, a bit.” She’s rubbing the hand that was on his wrist absentmindedly against her own. His wrist burns. “You’re right. We can only influence what’s ahead.”

“Yeah.” He flashes a weak smile at her. “I mean, if I’m being honest, that advice was as much as for me as for you, though.” 

“Well, then. I guess we can both work on it together.”

“Sounds…good.”

Barry makes a hurried exit after that, not really feeling like awkwardly smiling at Lucretia anymore, and he figures that’s probably the end of it. It isn’t, though, because he’s been working with Lup and Taako to learn the animal language used on this world, and Lup is psychic or something.

He shows up early in the morning outside the ship to travel to where the mongeese reside. Taako had stayed nearby the family last night, so it’s just Lup waiting for him with a shit-eating grin.

“Barry,” she says in a sing-song, “You’ve been _holding out on me.”_

“I…what? I have?” 

She links arms with him and he only chokes a little bit, which he is proud of. A valiant effort. “Yes! Spill! I want every sordid detail.” 

Barry blinks at her, ignoring the warmth of her arm against his. Mostly. He’s at what he thinks is a very reasonable 65% ignoring level. “I, uh. I can spill when I know what you’re talking about, maybe.”

“You and Lucretia, obviously!”

He blinks even faster. It probably looks dumb. “I’m still maybe a little bit lost?”

“Oh, come on, don’t play stupid with me,” Lup coos, waving a dismissive hand. “You two were looking very adorable last night, with the blushing and staring and getting all awkward about making skin contact—”

Barry stumbles on a rock. “Oh, gods—no, no, that’s not—”

“Oh, you don’t have to lie to _me._ Who asked who? Who’s the nasty one between you two? Want a third?” 

Barry tamps down hard on the images that word provokes, then forms his hands in an ‘x’ shape and holds them up in front of his face. “No,” he says, voice at an embarrassingly high pitch. “You are very very entirely wrong right now. Like, to—astronomically wrong levels. Your wrongness is in a different planar system very far away.”

“Oh?” Lup says, looking amused. 

“Yes! That’s—there’s no way, okay, I’m not—wow! This shouldn’t even need to be explained!” If he had thought he was flushed last night, it’s nothing compared to right now. Gods, he hopes Lucretia doesn’t hear about this and get mad. He doesn’t want her to think he’s been giving off—impressions, or anything. Vibes. Running a shaky hand through his hair, he continues, “There is no way that would ever happen, obviously, _obviously._ Lucretia is really pretty, you see—oh, gods.”

Lup looks positively gleeful now. “Oh, she definitely is. Go on. You’re making a wonderful case for yourself.”

“That’s _not_ what I mean,” he says desperately. “She’s very pretty and a lovely individual and! I mean, we barely know each other, but—even if we did! I’m!” He presses his lips together, exhaling through his nose. “Don’t make me say it,” he mumbles. “Please.”

“Gay?” Lup asks, eyebrows raised.

“No!” He scrubs his hands through his hair again, frustrated. “I’m _me,_ Lup, come on. Barry Bluejeans?” 

The amused look is starting to dissipate. “What do you mean by that?” Lup asks carefully.

“Oh, don’t give me that,” he snaps in an uncharacteristic display of anger, pulling his arm away from the crook of her elbow. This is not something he wants to talk about, especially with someone as cool as Lup. She’ll never understand. He doesn’t even know why he bothers being honest, except for maybe just that he’s tired. “People like you and Lucretia and Taako and everybody else, you do not look _twice_ at someone like me like that, and why the fuck would you? I’m a weird chubby nerd in oversized jeans and a tshirt. My only claim to fame will be as a prime candidate for a fantasy Rogaine testimonial. I wear glasses and my idea of fun is a necromancy novel and a notepad, because yes, I fucking _take notes_ on forbidden arcane tomes, like, that’s so—” He makes an irritated noise in his throat. “ _Please._ I’m never going to have any ‘sordid details’, _certainly_ not with Lucretia, who again, I barely know, and it’s a little bit fucked up that you’re pretending you don’t know that.”

Lup’s expression is inscrutable as he glares at her. Eventually she says, “Wow, okay, there’s a lot there.” 

As much as he wants to look away, he doesn’t. She can’t call him a coward, anyway.

“Like, I don’t even know where to start, really,” she continues without missing a beat. “First off, I was teasing about you and Lucretia, so I guess…sorry? If I had known it was really sensitive—well, I mean, I might’ve still said something, but maybe nicer.” She sighs. “Okay. So that’s done. Next up, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. Like, you’re—what, you think people don’t go for cute scruffy geniuses who are, like, also really sweet guys? That’s your—that’s your premise here? How about we scientific method that shit, because holy fuck, Barry, I know wack self-esteem can mess with you in a major way, but there’s being down on yourself and just being _inaccurate._ Like, do you think I was staring at you in the gym because of your, what, weightlifting prowess?” 

He _really_ wants to look away. “I thought you forgot about that.”

“Of course you did. I didn’t, though. So while we’re on _that_ subject, can I deliver you a friendly fuck you for apparently deciding every attractive person in existence is a shallow douchebag?”

“That's not—I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah, I know what you meant was that you’re such toxic sludge that people can’t stand to be in your presence or whatever, but you’re also saying by extension that people ‘like me and Lucretia and Taako’—which, way to lump us all in together, compadre—that because we have awesome faces, we’re apparently incapable of seeing other lesser individuals and looking past their tragic noses to their great personalities.”

Barry finally looks away, down at his feet, fidgeting intensely. “I didn’t really think it through from that perspective,” he murmurs. “But…you’re right, that’s sort of what it sounds like.”

“No shit.”

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Uh. Sorry. I…sorry, I can find something else to do today, or—for as long as you want—” 

“Dude. Barry. We have got to find you a coping mechanism that doesn’t involve internalizing everything. I would suggest explosions, but I took that already.”

He peeks up, but surprisingly she doesn’t look angry, just sort of resigned.

With her weird mind-reading powers, she says, “I’m not angry at you, okay? Like I said, I know your brain can make anything seem true. It’s not like I think you’re, like, malicious. I know what that looks like, trust me. But I’m also not going to let you just keep thinking like that, because it’s not good for you, and we’re friends.” 

He stares at her hand, which she’s extended in his direction, and says, feeling a bit drained, “We don’t really know each other either.” 

“Well, we’re friends now, so we’d better get started. Otherwise it will be awfully awkward when we make each other scrapbooks, don’t you think?”

And it takes a few moments of silence, but he half-smiles and he takes her proffered hand and he says, “We can start with friendship bracelets. Don’t need to know anything about anyone to do friendship bracelets.”

And he hears Lup’s grin in her voice when she says, “Fuck yes, Barold, I knew you could be fun,” and the feeling of her hand warm in his for the first time is another moment that time will never be able to take from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope the tone and characterization aren't too inconsistent here, i'm sort of all over the place on a frequent basis lol
> 
> also do you mean to say other folks dont just tell people about their insecurities without knowing them super well? i dont understand??? this concept?????? //has no situational filter


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for swears, dissociation, frank discussion of fears and insecurities

When the world ends a second time, everything is a bit less silent. Everybody’s panting, wide-eyed, and Magnus is shuddering uncontrollably, no longer dead but dropped down to a crouch on the deck, hand running over his heart over and over again almost compulsively, and Merle is punching ineffectively at a wall and murmuring, “Fuck, fuck, _no,”_ and Lup is screaming, “We just _left_ , again, what the _fuck,_ we just left them to _die,”_ and Davenport is yelling, “We needed to get out of there, Lup, you know that, come on, just,” and Taako is pacing back and forth before letting out an animal growl and stalking in the direction of his room. Lucretia isn’t saying anything. She’s staring at the stars, but she looks like she’s not seeing anything.

Barry doesn’t feel a damn thing.

Or, well, that’s not right. There’s something desperate and clawing somewhere deep, deep beneath, but it’s muffled by the nothing rising in his chest and up his throat. _This never ends, is what this means,_ he thinks, because he may not know yet about the recorded state but he can stitch together that one of them _died_ and now _isn’t dead_ and that the place they’re in now is not the same as the one they left, and he knows that’s not something that just happens twice accidentally. _This never ends. We do this forever, and none of it will mean anything, and it never ends._

The nothing fills him up until he’s over-full with it, ready to explode, and part of him distantly registers that he’s blinking way too rapidly, not in the way that means he’s going to cry but in the way that he’d usually associate with shock on someone else. He’s not shocked, though, he’s not anything, and his body aches with _I can’t do forever. I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t—_

“Barry,” someone says, and he registers it more out of habit than any particular attachment to the name. “Barry, you look like hell, you should sit down.”

“I’m fine,” his body says. 

“Like shit,” the someone says—Lup, Lup is the someone—and manhandles him over to the couch. “Sit. You’re okay. We’re okay.” 

“No,” he says, just that, simple. True.

There’s a pause, then, “Yeah, no. But we will be.” And Lup’s hand is only on his shoulder for a second, but for that moment the warmth of her hand replaces the nothing and makes a—well, he doesn’t know what, yet, but a something.

And they are, indeed, okay.

Not immediately, and not always. Magnus is the first to die, but he is not the last. They hurt, and they hurt each other, and they make up and grow close and closer still.

It’s a closeness Barry once never would have thought himself capable of, but there’s an intimacy you learn from spending years with people. There are some cycles, some days, where there is little more to do than talk. Cycle 6, for example, where the world is covered entirely in a thick layer of sludge. There are settlements here and there, built on platforms resting atop the thick, gritty ooze, but they don’t take kindly to visitors. It’s the weight, they explain from afar the first time they’re attacked for trying to step foot on one of the platforms; the weight has to be right or they’ll sink and never stop.

(Barry can sympathize, some days. He can’t let the weight of forever rest on his mind for too long, or he worries he might do the same.)

Every now and then they’ll still venture out, Taako casting Levitate on himself to negotiate for supplies, but the settlement folks still get a bit nervous, so most of the time the crew stays on the Starblaster. They sacrifice a lot that year, and among those things given away are any of the remaining boundaries they had between them. It’s physical stuff—Merle, for example, is a _lot_ more comfortable with casual partial nudity than any of them, perhaps, would like—but also emotional. Magnus has never been particularly closed-off, but it still takes him months of late-night conversations to admit that his biggest fear has always been that he won’t be able to protect the ones he loves. Merle cuts into the resulting silence by saying matter-of-factly that he knows he’s not the best cleric, and that he never knows when or if he’ll be replaced by someone more competent.

(He shrugs, laying back on the couch—or, well, on Davenport, who is on the couch and makes an undignified squeaking noise—and says with a cheeriness that rings a bit false, “Not here, though. By necessity.”

“Not just by necessity,” Davenport says, with perhaps a bit more emotion than he had intended, and Merle looks up at him with an inscrutable expression, then smiles and pats Davenport’s cheek.)

Davenport talks haltingly about how he’s always given everything he has to work, and that he doesn’t know who he is without it, if he’s _anything_ without it. His hands tremble, and Merle takes one of them and rests it on his heart with his own hand atop it, and everybody looks away courteously.

Everybody turns to Taako next, who’s been very silent the entire time. He’s sprawled across Lup’s lap, with his hair very carefully pulled into a wrap so that none of it can touch her. His legs are on Lucretia’s lap, with another off the couch and artfully placed on Magnus’s shoulder. He might look casual to anybody who didn’t know him as well as they’re beginning to, but every line of his body is tense. 

“What?” he says airily. “Taako doesn’t do fear.”

Lup snorts, and Taako’s gaze goes momentarily sharp, almost a glare, before relaxing again into an artificially calm expression. “No, seriously. Like, I guess I’m afraid of bad franchise reboots?”

Magnus idly runs his hand over Taako’s shin. “It’s okay to be afraid, you know.”

“Of course it is, but I’m not,” Taako snaps, suddenly retracting all of his limbs and huddling up in a ball on the couch, scowling. “I’m _not._ What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell you that everybody leaves me and that I’m scared you all will too? What, do you want me to cry about how they only let me into the IPRE because Lup said she wouldn’t come unless I did, and not because I wasn’t talented or smart enough but because I was—” He sneers, lip curling. “A _liability?_ Or perhaps you want me to flay myself before you and talk about how I’m _never_ quite good enough for other people, just not _quite_ there, too loud or too mean or just too, too _much,_ and maybe we can throw in some introspective bullshit about how I act like I’m the best because I’m so fucking scared I’m _not._ And then I can some transmute some popcorn and we can paint our nails and get drunk and sing Celine Dion. _Fuck_ you all very much, thanks, I’m not going to do any of that shit.” He moves to get off the couch, bristling, but Lup pulls him back and slings an arm around his shoulder, keeping him pinned down with strength that Barry no longer finds surprising.

“Well, I am afraid,” she declares loudly. “Enough for both of us.”

Taako looks at her suspiciously, lips pressed together.

“No, really. I’m scared every day.” She shrugs, like it’s just a fact instead of an admission. “I’m scared that one of these cycles we’ll all die and it’ll all be over, but I’m also scared that it will never be over. And I’m scared of losing you guys, and of losing _myself._ The situation we’re in is scary. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.” She nudges Taako, who rolls his eyes but relaxes a bit.

Lucretia speaks up, a bit hesitant. “I guess I’m afraid that—all this, everything we do, won’t mean anything.” She pauses, biting her lip, then murmurs, “That I won’t mean anything. That I’ll never change, and I’ll just keep making the same mistakes, and that it doesn’t matter how much I try, I’ll just—never matter, and I’ll be forgotten.” Her head bows, long hair curtaining her face, and it’s a bit muffled when she says, “Maybe that’s selfish.”

“I don’t think so,” Lup says with a surprisingly soft smile, and she tucks Lucretia’s hair behind her ear and takes her hand. “But I’ll never forget you, for what that’s worth.” 

Lucretia pinks, and Barry feels a pang of something run through his chest at the sight of them holding hands. It’s not jealousy, though, not that he’d have any right to jealousy. It just feels _right._ He’s next to Lucretia, and it would be _so_ easy to take her other hand, and—

He doesn’t do that. “I’m afraid of _everything,_ ” he whispers, almost inaudible, almost just to himself. “I’m so goddamn scared, and maybe the scariest thing is that I think I’m _right_ to be.”

He doesn’t take Lucretia’s hand, but Lucretia does take his, and for a moment they’re all sitting there, all of the crew connected, and he thinks to himself, _This should be comforting. I shouldn’t be scared right now._

But with Lucretia’s hand in his, and Lup’s in Lucretia’s, and his friends surrounding him, and with feelings that he can’t explain and can’t bring himself to acknowledge roiling in him, he’s never been so terrified in his life.

The next day, Lucretia shows up to morning breakfast with hair cut to her nape. She looks incredibly uncomfortable, nervous, a forced half-smile at the corners of her lips as she raises a hand to play with hair that is no longer there, then stops midway and instead rubs the back of her neck. 

She’s one of the most beautiful people Barry has ever seen, next to Lup, and his heart stops a bit, partially because she’s lovely, and partially because he knows that it’s not just her appearance that’s making him feel this, whatever _this_ is, this fondness sitting heavy at the base of his chest.

Merle and Davenport compliment her, and Barry panics a bit as he realizes he has to say something too. Like, actual _words,_ fuck. If he doesn’t say anything she might think he doesn’t like it, right? Not that he wants her to know he _likes_ it, just that she looks good—or—fuck, the longer he takes the more obvious it will be that he’s affected by this—

“Your hair,” Barry blurts out, too loud, and everybody turns to look at him quizzically. Oh, gods, now he needs to follow up. “You have it.” Oh _gods,_ please somebody _kill him_. “Short, I mean, you have it short, um…it’s…it’s good. You look good.” With that, he shrinks in on himself and takes an overly large gulp of some orange juice Taako had transmuted for everybody this morning, then promptly chokes on it and gets it all over his shirt. His face is bright red at this point. Fuck.

Magnus cuts in easily with some quip about short hair and sideburns—remind Barry to send him a gift basket or something when they get to a cycle that has those—and Taako offers to even out the edges.

Lup walks in late, yawning and stretching, and Barry, still coughing, pointedly does not look at how her sleep shirt lifts the slightest bit above her waist because he doesn’t need that right now and also because he’d like to be not, like, a _complete_ creepy weirdo. She notices Lucretia after that and wolf whistles, grinning delightedly. “Hot _damn,_ Luce, you _fine_ piece of _ass.”_

“My ass is no more fine today than it was yesterday,” Lucretia says calmly, but the flush on her cheeks sort of gives her away. Barry doesn’t blame her. Lup is a force of nature. 

Lup wiggles her eyebrows and says silkily, “Exactly,” and then Lucretia chokes too, and then it’s just Barry and Lucretia coughing around the breakfast table and Lup laughing and Taako appraising the situation with raised eyebrows and Merle and Davenport and Magnus hiding their smiles. A veritable dumbass brigade, Barry thinks, of which he is the undisputed captain. 

They have a lot of talks like that in cycle 6, and the cycle after that and after that too. Barry wonders some days whether they’ll have any more to talk about, whether there’s anything he _doesn’t_ know about his friends—and they are his friends, now, without a doubt—but they always find ways to surprise him. And really, eventually, there’s a point where you don’t have to have more deep heartfelt talks to know somebody. You just know them, you just love them, and you can talk about anything and nothing and still find a way to love them more.

Things are still hard. Barry still looks to his future and sees that looming forever, and he’s still unbearably scared. But he knows that he’ll have everyone else with him, and sometimes that makes it more bearable. Lup says that she believes they’re going to find a way to defeat the Hunger, and he doesn’t know if he believes in _that,_ but he will always believe in _her._ He puts his hand in the circle, and he feels the hands of everybody else next to him, and that terror is still there, but less. Just for that moment. 

20 cycles pass by in an eternity and an instant, and then it’s cycle 21.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooboy ok i got to this original ending point for this chapter and i was like eh...2.2k words is a bit shorter than the previous chapters i should keep going. and then when i checked again it was 4.2k and that's just too frickin long so i cut it anyway lol...
> 
> the scene near the end there is just rehashing one from the second part of this series if you haven't read it
> 
> also dont mind me projecting way 2 hard onto barry. hes mine for the duration of this story which means i can do feelings through him yes? yes, i think that's how that works (that was sarcasm)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for depression talk (very much so, please be careful), hopelessness

Cycle 21 is a good, good year. They get the Light early, the world is a beach, there aren’t limited resources—though the filtration system Barry had worked on in cycle 6 did come in handy, since the water is mostly saltwater—and there aren’t any immediate threats other than a nasty sunburn.

Given that there’s nothing really urgent that needs doing, Barry spends a lot of time that year just looking out at the waves and thinking. His thoughts get tangled, sometimes, especially with all the time he spends running from them, so he thinks and watches Taako surf and he thinks some more.

As much as he loves everybody onboard the Starblaster, he has enough self-awareness to know that…whatever it is he feels for Lup and Lucretia is a bit different. Like, he’d give his life for Taako, but he sure as hell wouldn’t kiss him. Lup, though, Lucretia—

Okay. Let’s not go there.

(He would very much kiss them both, were he permitted.)

(He is not.)

It’s not the feelings being for two people that throws him for a loop, not exactly. It’s the feelings themselves, this bone-deep longing that he refuses to name. Because he knows what polyamory is, he knows that ideologically he would be perfectly all right with loving two people and them loving each other, and—not that this is love, that’s an important point, it can’t be. But if you have—a crush? No, that’s not quite right either—if you have _feelings_ for two people and neither of them like you _back,_ that’s not polyamory, right? It’s just pathetic. He’s pathetic.

This is not news to him. 

And, okay, sometimes he wonders for a split second before his mind fights back. Lup, for example; he can notice all he wants that her dynamic is a bit different with him and Lucretia than, say, with Magnus—but she’s just _like_ that, knows it flusters them, it doesn’t _mean_ anything. Or Lucretia, he can notice that sometimes her gaze lingers a bit longer than might be considered normal, not so much analytical as thoughtful. He can notice the easy touches between her and Lup, or the way she still goes a bit pink when Lup kisses her cheek, even though she doesn’t blush as much anymore as she did at the beginning. He can notice all of that, but he can just as easily explain it all away. Who’s to say how long a gaze lasts before it’s more than just her appraising him like she does everything else? Who is he to say that her and Lup touch more than might be normal for a platonic relationship? Nothing else in this situation is normal. And—and who knows, maybe Lucretia does have a crush on Lup, maybe she even loves her (and he is 100% ignoring the combination happiness-despair that bubbles up in him at that thought with the kind of finesse that takes, apparently, 20 years to develop), but if so that has nothing to do with him. He’s not a part of any of this. He’s just looking in from the outside and wanting, like he always has.

Lucretia said once that she was afraid of never changing. He supposes he’s afraid of that too. Twenty years, and he can’t even admit to himself that he l—that he lo—

 _Gods,_ yeah, pathetic is definitely the right word. He sighs and casts his eyes across the horizon to find Taako. He wishes he could be more like him sometimes. Not that Taako doesn't have his own issues—of all the people on the ship, Taako has opened up the least, but in doing so he’s sort of shown his hand anyway, to an extent—but he’s also himself, unapologetically so, and he’s brave and bright and…he can swim. Barry can’t even do _that._

 _You could ask him,_ Barry’s brain suggests. _He could teach you._  

Barry frowns, shaking his head. No, that’s a bad idea. Taako might laugh at him. He could tell Lup, and Lup would—well, she’d probably be nicer, but in a sort of teasing oh-you-nerd way and then he’d blush and be painfully obvious again and—

_You want to change, right?_

Okay, but learning to swim isn’t going to change everything, thanks.

 _But something,_ his mind offers. _It would change something, anyway._

And an hour later, when Taako comes in, Barry gathers every ounce of courage and intercepts Taako. “Wow, good day today, Taako, you, uh…” He falters as Taako raises a well-manicured eyebrow at him. It’s sort of one of his signature moves. “Boy, that was a good day out there today, Taako.” Fuck, he already said that. “You were really— eatin’ that foam up, just really carving that spray.” _Fuck,_ he hadn’t already said that but he never ever should have said that, he sounds like such a dork right now. Come on. Power through. “Um… Hey, can I ask you, um… Can I ask you a favor?”

Taako tilts his head, eyes assessing. “Sure, yeah, of course.” 

“I made myself, like, pretty vulnerable here and I hope that you can appreciate that.” Fuck, no, he shouldn’t just _point that out,_ that he feels awkward about this. “And I know that we haven’t— We’ve been traveling together for, um, two decades but we haven’t really had much time to get to know each other, um…” Taako’s eyebrows are climbing ever higher. He totally sounds like he’s asking Taako on a date right now, doesn’t he. “Will you—ah, fuck…will you teach me how to swim?”

Suprisingly—or maybe not so surprisingly? Barry still finds it difficult to get a handle on Taako sometimes—Taako says yes. He teases him, obviously, but he says yes, and Barry learns how to swim, and his thoughts are still tangled, but he can sort of forget that all for a while when he’s floating out in the ocean.

It’s a few months later, near the end of the cycle, and Barry feels like he should thank Taako—more than he already has, anyway—so he does. But he’s also still himself, which means he starts rambling, which means he is mentally screaming at himself to stop even as he stutters out under Taako’s watchful gaze, “I just think, you know, it’s like all, all of you…I don’t wanna be—I don’t wanna embarrass myself in front of, and, like…for example, just like…for example, like…like…Lup. I look…I look—”

Taako is failing badly to suppress a grin. Honestly, he’s probably not even _trying_ to suppress it. “Okay.” 

“Yeah, I look up to Lup a lot. You know, I don’t wanna be out there flounderin’ around, splashin’ around like some sort of goobus so, um…just, thank—just—” 

Taako’s grin grows impossibly wider as he tells Barry that this is ‘not a surprise’. Barry is thoroughly contemplating running away and hiding, perhaps underneath a rock for forever, when Taako’s face goes a bit more serious. “Barry, you’re locked in and this wave’s crashin’ all around you, my man and I—I don’t begrudge you…anything. You know, we’ve lost a lot, uh, and there’s a lot more we might lose, but—the one thing we do have is the thing that people in love rarely ever have enough of, and it’s time.”

Barry blinks, then goes a bright red. “Oh. I. I don’t know about…you know. I don’t know about in love. It’s only been tw—” He coughs. “Um. Twenty-one years…”

_Shit._

“Sure,” Taako says, almost uncharacteristically gentle. “Sure.”

“Sh—shit,” Barry repeats, out loud this time, because he can only run for so long, and if everybody else knows, then—then Lup might, Lucretia might— _Gods,_ he can’t—he can’t—

“Barry,” Taako says, still gentle, face understanding, and Barry feels the terror rising again. He can’t _do_ this. 

“Um,” he says, high-pitched, hands twisting against each other.

“Barry, I—” Taako sighs, then puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder before withdrawing it almost immediately. “You got all the time in the world, my man.”

He leaves after that, but Barry can’t decide whether that’s a comfort or the worst part. Because—an eternity with them, maybe—maybe he could. But an eternity with them _knowing,_ with them _pitying_ him—

He wanders back to the ship, a bit dazed, and goes to the back deck of the ship. People don’t go there, usually, not much. They mostly use it for storage these days, since it’s covered. He is, therefore, not expecting to see Lucretia, who pulls a cloth over something almost reflexively and whips around, wide-eyed. He’s sure he looks the same.

“Oh, fuck—sorry, I didn’t mean—” He runs a hand through his hair nervously. “I’m sorry, I can—”

“No, it’s fine,” Lucretia says, a bit breathless. “I was just—it’s fine.”

They stand staring at each other for a few moments longer before Barry laughs awkwardly. Just his luck for running into one of the people he was trying to escape in the first place. “Gods, I’m a mess,” he murmurs under his breath, but apparently not quiet enough. The terror rises, rises, until he’s nearly frantic with it.

“Are you okay?” Lucretia asks, and the light of one of this planet’s moons reflects off her dark skin in a way that’s truly breathtaking. 

His shoulders slump, and he laughs again, harsher this time. “I don’t know if I ever have been,” he says, voice small in this moonlit room. “I don’t—” He shakes his head, looking down. “Every time I think I’m okay, that I’m _managing,_ it all slips away. There’s just—there’s just _so much,_ Lucretia, there’s _so much._ Not even of hard things, of—of everything. We live every day, and we get through the day, and then there’s more, and on and on and on into infinity, and—and it never _stops,_ there’s just always _more._ Over and over and over again. I wake up and I eat and I research and I talk to you guys and I research some more and I fail and I fail again and I go to sleep and then it’s the same thing the next day, and—” It claws its way up his throat again, and he can feel his voice becoming thick. Fuck, he doesn’t want to cry. “It never _ever_ stops. Just more and more and more, and there are so many things to do, and they just keep getting bigger, and I can’t _do_ it, I—how do people do this? How does _anybody_ do this? Do we all just keep going because there’s a promise of some far-off happiness or is everybody else okay and I’m just—just—” His voice breaks off on a wail, and he claps his hand to his mouth to stifle it as his eyes well with tears. “I’m sorry. Fuck. I need to go. I.” His voice comes out muffled, incomprehensible, and he needs to go, but he feels frozen.

“Barry,” Lucretia says softly, moving towards him cautiously, like she’s afraid he’s going to make a break for it. He might, actually, would have already if he could move. She reaches out, and he stares at her terrified, until she gathers him into a hug.

And then that’s _it,_ he’s crying, sobbing helplessly into her shoulder, because he doesn’t _want_ to be showing her how weak he is, doesn’t want _anybody_ to see, but also—it’s so nice for someone to finally know. He’s never talked about this, hasn’t been able to bring himself to, and Lucretia’s hands are running soothingly along his back and it’s so nice, but—he tries to pull himself away and Lucretia pulls him closer.

“Barry, come on,” she says. “It’s okay, really. You’re not the only one, I promise.” 

He sort of huffs mid-sob—not quite disbelieving, but maybe a bit incredulous.

“No, I promise. I don’t always deal with this well either, you know?” She falls silent for a few moments, hands still rubbing his back, keeping him grounded. “It’s worst at night,” she says eventually, voice distant. “I catalog everything that happened that day that I haven’t gotten to yet, and then I lie in bed and look at—I have a skylight in my room. I look at the stars, and they’re infinite, and I can’t even begin to conceptualize being the same. Like, even just practically. What do you _do_ for an eternity? There are infinite variations, but—if you are also infinite, don’t you eventually run out of new things? Don’t you get tired of old things? Don’t you get _bored?”_ Her hand squeezes into his shirt for a second, then she relaxes and shakes her head, exhaling against his neck. “It’s only been twenty years and I already have no idea what to do with myself some days. Sometimes I sleep in just so that I don’t have to fill the time, and then I wake up in the afternoon and go to sleep again. There’s—you’re right, Barry, there’s so much, and it’s too much for any one person to handle alone.”

She draws back now, looking him in the eyes with a serious expression. “But you’re not alone. You have all of us. And—I have a hard time drawing on that too, I _know_ how it is, but regardless of whether you ask for us or not we’re here. And if you—” She coughs lightly and looks away, but doesn’t let him go. “If you need something to fill the time, to distract you from thinking about this, well—I’m usually free, if—” He can’t tell if she’s blushing or if the light is just weird. “If you need to resort to that, I mean.” 

The tears have mostly slowed now, but his voice is still snotty and ridiculous-sounding when he says, “You’re never going to be a last resort to me, Lucretia.” 

She stares at him, blinking, and—he’s pretty sure it’s a blush? That doesn’t make much sense, though—and then she realizes that their arms are still wrapped around each other, that they’re still pressed up against each other, or he’s guessing that’s what happens because she steps back just a touch too fast. “Oh. Um. Well—thank you.”

He doesn’t know why things always end up like this, with them standing a few feet apart and making what would appear to an outsider to be a concerted effort at pretending the other doesn't exist, but he’s kind of tired of it. He wants to change, right? There’s a couch in here too—there’s a couch in most rooms, they’re very fond of their lounge furniture here on the Starblaster—and he impulsively takes Lucretia’s hand and drags her to it, then pulls her down to sit next to him. “Come on. I just got snot all over your shirt, I think we can be past the awkward strangers bit we do.” He smiles at her, a bit weak, but he’s doing his best. “Let’s just sit for a while, okay? I don’t know that I want the others to see my eyes all puffy.” He snorts, self-conscious. “I spend _such_ a long time on my beauty routine, after all.” 

“Mm, it shows,” she says with a grin, beginning to relax into the couch cushions, though she’s keeping the distance between them. Their hands are still together, though; he wonders idly if she hasn’t noticed. Maybe he should do the right thing and detach, but—he’s just borne his soul, okay, he thinks a little bit of skin contact isn’t such a terrible thing to ask for.

The conversation is a bit halting for a while, after that—it takes some doing to get past what they were talking about before—but Lucretia asks about what he’s been up to, and whether he’s made any progress on that automatic transmutation device he’s been tinkering around with, and they discuss the finer points of spellcasting without a magic user as a conduit, and before he knows it the sun is starting to rise again and they’re both stifling yawns against their hands.

“Luce?” he asks sleepily, head starting to list towards her shoulder. There’s not really a distance between them anymore; it seemed a bit pointless after the first hour. Their hands are still entwined, but he’s not going to bother thinking about what that means, if anything. 

“Yeah?” she asks, sounding just as tired.

“Do you think we’re going to get out of this? Do you think—” He stops for a moment, trying to find the right words in his sleep-addled brain. “Do you think we end up happy?”

She sighs, nestling under his chin. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. But—I don’t think happiness is a destination, either. I think it comes and goes, and we appreciate it when we have it and we deal with it when we don’t. Because, I mean—what’s the alternative? You either live or you die, and if you’re living—even if it’s hard, that means you’re getting through it. Everything else comes second.”

“Mm. I wan’ you to be happy,” Barry murmurs into her hair, not really a conscious statement anymore, just a true one. “You deserve it.”

He’s properly asleep by the time she responds quietly, looking a lot less sleepy than she was pretending to be a few seconds ago. “No, I don’t think so,” she whispers, stroking her hands through his curls, then stilling guiltily and slowly drawing her hand away. “I really don’t think I do.” 

She’s gone when he wakes, blanket draped over him and sun streaming in through the windows, and he puts his hand to his hair and imagines he can still feel her there.

A week later, and a week before the end of the cycle, Lucretia brings them all together to showcase what she’s been working on this entire year. It’s evening, and there’s a fire roaring merrily on the beach, and Barry is watching everything with a smile. It’s then that he feels himself being grabbed behind, and he gives an undignified shriek as he pitches forward. His glasses go flying, and he has a moment to think _oh God, not again, those things are so finicky to transmute properly and Taako made the arms rainbow last time as revenge,_ but any thought he might have had derails as Lup darts in and grabs the glasses, then presents them to him with a smile lit by the glow of the fire.

“Thanks,” Barry breathes, a bit stricken by the way the light dances across her face, flashing back to Lucretia under the moon, and gods, how could he ever have tried to convince himself that he wasn’t in love with them?

“No problem,” she says, then puts them on him, taps the bridge, and smiles again. She’s close, and Barry is so goddamn weak, and he blushes and looks to the side—only to see Lucretia, with a smile of her own, except it’s small and tight and she looks like she’s in pain, but that _definitely_ doesn’t make sense. He frowns, then looks back at Lup, and she’s gazing at him thoughtfully.

“What?” he asks, tilting his head.

“Nothing. Hey, I think Lucy is finally going to show us her super secret rectangular object.” She raises her voice on the last bit, amused.

“I already told you it’s a painting,” Lucretia says, and she actually does a passable imitation of normal. Barry might not have picked up on the tremor in her voice if it hadn’t been the same one from when she was hugging him. “It’s the contents that are secret.” 

“Porn,” Lup stage whispers, and Lucretia squawks.

“No! I wouldn’t—okay, there are so many things there, but among them, why would I gather all of you together to show you a lewd painting?” 

Lup shrugs, lazy, moving towards her gracefully to hang off her shoulder. “We all got our kinks.” 

“ _Well this is not one of them,”_ Lucretia hisses, face red, but the tremor in her voice is gone, and for some reason at that moment Lup looks back at Barry and _winks._ He blinks, brows knitting together. What was that about? 

“Oh? Well if you had given me that itemized list I had asked for maybe I’d know that.”

“I’m not—you didn’t— _Lup!_ ”

“Inquiring minds want to know,” she says reasonably, and it’s to Lucretia sputtering that Lup darts forward and removes the cloth over the painting.

Barry looks at them on the canvas, painted with unbelievable care, love in every stroke, happiness in their expressions. They look like a family, and he realizes with a rush of something inexplicable that they _feel_ like a family, and he thinks, _I still don’t_ want _a forever, but if I_ have _to have one, I want it to be with them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first bit is taken heavily from the transcript of the beach episode except with 100% more em-dashes
> 
> barry and lucretia's talk is baaaasically just me unceremoniously dumping my current depressionthoughts all over you guys. like not to get religious or anything but i was raised in a religion that believed in an afterlife that was just an eternity and i always found that concept absolutely horrifying. like i can barely do *this*, how the hell are you expecting me to do this for *forever*
> 
> anyway these dorks need to learn how to fuckin communicate but thats a lost cause if there ever were one at least 4now


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: talking about merle's multiple parley deaths and how it affects the crew, so there's a lot of mourning and some unhealthy behaviors on everybody's part

It’s kind of terrifying, learning to love someone, learning to let yourself open up and then knowing that they can do whatever they want with what they find there. Barry loves the crew of the Starblaster dearly. But getting himself to the point that he trusts they won’t take what he gives them and hurt him with it is—it’s another thing entirely, really. 

Perhaps the hardest thing to learn is that sometimes people hurt you and they don’t _mean_ it, but their intentions never stop it from aching. Taako snaps, and his words _hurt,_ and Barry knows that he is having a bad day, but—he doesn’t want to be just the sort of person who lets people hurt him indiscriminately, either. That’s never been who he is. Or Lucretia locks herself away for days on end, and she shows up skeletal and gaunt, and Barry knows how hard it is to rely on others, he _knows_ that, but he still feels a deep and visceral pain that she’d let herself get to that point and not let him help.

Barry’s not exactly a cynic. Or, well, maybe he is, but the sort who likes to call themselves a realist, and—well, he doesn’t know where that leaves him, but the ultimate point is that he actually sincerely believes most people don’t _intend_ to ruin you, but sometimes they still do. Most people fumble through their lives just as much as you do, and they hurt and they cause hurt, and you have to decide for yourself where the balance lies between taking all that hurt in and closing yourself off completely. It’s a rough balance, and he doesn’t think he’s gotten the hang of it yet, but spending all this time with people who are so clearly flawed but also so clearly _trying_ and beautiful in their imperfections, he thinks he’s managed to find at least something workable. Not a perfect solution—there rarely are any of those—but one that helps him manage when the people that he’s let deeper into his heart than anybody else leave a wound.

But then there is Parley, and it turns out that Merle, who is unobtrusive and calm and irreverent and kind and so, so important to all of them— _Merle_ is the one that, for a time, he does not know if he can forgive. Because Merle has only the best of intentions. Merle finds something he can do that’s useful, and he does it without complaint, and it’s so incredibly _him,_ but he also dies.

And they wait a year for him, and he talks to them for thirty minutes, and they itch with the stories left to tell and the hugs they haven’t given him and the way they’ve _needed_ him and he hasn’t _been_ there, and there’s finally a kind of breath of relief in the room, _we have him back,_ and then he _goes back_ and he _dies again._

Barry knows that Merle has the best of intentions, but—they’ve always been best together, and Merle takes that from them again. It’s hard on all of them, those few cycles before they stop Merle, ask him _please, just wait until the end of the year._ It’s Davenport who finally gets him, Barry knows, and it’s the closest any of them will ever get to seeing him cry, but it is not that time yet. Now, it is the beginning of cycle two without Merle.

They all cope differently, but none of them well. Merle binds them, centers them in a way that’s not quite filled by anybody else on the ship, and without him, they fall apart a bit. Taako is a bit angrier, a bit more harsh, with an edge they thought they had worn off him a long time ago. Magnus is a bit more quiet; he smiles a bit less, and he doesn’t tell anyone where he goes early in the morning that he comes back sweaty and dirty and with his expression drawn, but they don’t ask, either. Davenport is probably the worst. He and Merle have never exactly said they’re in a relationship, but they all know. It’s in the way that Merle puts a gentle hand on his shoulder when Davenport is getting too anxious, red in the face and running his hands through his hair until it sticks up in the back, and in the way that Davenport doesn’t startle when Merle touches him anymore, just glances back, smiles gratefully, and takes a deep breath. It’s in how the team would walk in on them, mugs in hand and discussing nothing in particular in the patch of sunlight where Merle keeps a lot of his plants, and in how, once, when Merle is teaching them how to dance, he beckons Davenport forward and they fall into a comfortable rhythm that says clearer than anything this is not the first time they’ve danced together. It’s in all of these small things, and without them, Davenport withers quietly. 

Barry is surprised by how _angry_ he is about all of this. He’s not at all quick to anger, a lot more likely to rationalize how he could have done better than to admit that other people may have wronged him, so it’s sort of a new experience for him, how when he thinks of Merle there’s a curl of something dark and furious in him alongside the hurt and sadness. Merle should have _known,_ he should have _thought_ for one goddamn second, it whispers, and he fights it back with everything he knows of Merle—how much he needs to help, to feel useful, how good he is and how dedicated. But it lingers there anyway, and that’s how Lup finds him, in his lab, screaming at a plant.

In fairness, that was not where he was planning on the evening going. He’s trying to distract himself by doing some shit about the theoretical applications of whatever-the-shit, but he’s rustling around on his desk for some notes he could’ve sworn he left somewhere, and then he uncovers a small plant near the back of his work desk. It’s hardy, or must be, because he hasn’t seen it before and it's been a month, but then he remembers Merle taking a few minutes after his debriefing to sneak off before going back in, and his heart freezes.

“Shit,” he swears, looking at it, and he thinks about Merle putting plants into the places where they spend the most time knowing they’ll miss him, and he thinks about Merle knowing that and leaving _anyway,_ and all of a sudden the rage boils over. “Fuck. Shit!” He sets the plant on a ledge where he can see it, hands trembling, and hisses, “How fucking _dare_ you.” 

It doesn’t respond, probably because it is a plant, and somehow this makes him even angrier.

“You left us with a fucking _plant?!”_ he yells, voice steadily raising in volume. “A _plant?_ What the fuck are we supposed to do with that?!” 

He vaguely recalls Davenport taking an extra glass of water to his room every morning, and he paces in front of his chair, bunching up his hair in his hands and pulling until it almost hurts. “ _Fuck_ , Merle! We never wanted a fucking _plant!_ We just wanted you to stay.” His voice cracks pathetically on the last word, and he releases his hair, slowly brings his hands down to his sides, and growls. 

The plant sits there. 

He lunges forward to grab it and shove it back underneath the papers, but doesn’t let go once it’s buried. Exhaling through his teeth, he puts it back where he can see it, staring with his lips pressed together.

“You too, huh?” Lup’s voice comes from the doorway, understanding and a lot more gentle than he usually hears her. He has to tamp down hard on the sudden urge to cry. 

“Me too what,” he says, voice flat and almost mean with the effort of not letting the emotion come through. He hasn’t had the time to compose himself.

“The plant.” His shoulders relax marginally, and he’s not really sure himself whether he’s relieved or sad that she didn’t hear him yelling, until she adds, “And, you know, the trauma.”

Even as he murmurs “I’m not traumatized,” a token protest, he knows how ridiculous it is he’s saying it, and Lup’s little bark of laughter only confirms it.

“Oh, honey, we’re all a bit traumatized.”

“Well.” He pauses, shifts his weight. “Okay. Yeah. True.” 

“There we go.” She moves forward, telegraphing her movements carefully so he can move away if he wants to, but he doesn’t really. “Davenport found his a few weeks ago,” she says, gesturing her head at the plant. “You know that day he refused to come out of his room at all?”

“Shit,” Barry whispers, feeling the anger rise again.

“Yeah. Not a good day.” There’s a short, uncomfortable silence, then, “I was sort of wondering when your breaking point would be.”

He glances at her, not quite a glare, but not really kind either. “I didn’t—”

“Oh, cut the shit please, Barry. I know you have your whole Stoic McPokerface shtick—” 

“Ex _cuse_ me,” he splutters, but she continues right over him.

“—but, like, we’re all doing bad, you know? Why the fuck do you think we’re all doing our best fantasy soap opera reenactments?” She sighs, leaning against his desk and looking at him with an arched eyebrow. “Sure as hell not for fun.” 

“I know that.” He’s really tired, now. 

“Okay, so, like. What makes you better than any of us?” He squirms under her gaze— _two_ eyebrows now, that’s too much power for him. “Nothing, is what. I mean, like, you’re brilliant and you have a great ass—”

“ _Lup,_ holy fuck.”

“—but so does pretty much everyone on this ship.” She grins, but there’s not really any humor behind it. “Okay. Well, everyone.” 

“Putting the ‘ass’ in Starblaster,” he quips dryly, mostly because he knows it’ll make her smile, even if that smile is fleeting. 

“Gosh, Barry, why haven’t you been snapped up yet? Smart, handsome—” She ignores the face he makes at that. “Great badonkadonk, if you’ll excuse my vernacular, _and_ he makes ass puns.”

“Too fantastic,” he says, a hint of a smile finally ghosting over his face, and she narrows her eyes at him.

“Did you just.”

“Maybe.” The smile drops, and he takes a deep breath as he looks back at the plant and shakes his head. “Okay, yeah, so I’m fucked up about this.”

“I mean, if it makes you feel any better,” Lup says reasonably, examining a fingernail, “You could have done worse than screaming at a plant.”

“Really? Please tell me how.” 

She shrugs. “You could’ve screamed at him. He could’ve gotten back and you could’ve never told anybody and it could’ve just boiled up inside you, and you could’ve screamed at him.”

All of the fight immediately leaves him, and he sags against the desk also—not touching Lup, but next to her. “Fuck, he’d be so sad,” he murmurs, and Lup nods.

“That’s why I think it’s—better that we get this out of our systems,” she says. “Because it’s something we need to talk about with him, when he gets back, but—not angry. He shouldn’t blame himself for this.”

Barry is so, so tired. “I know. I know that. It’s not—his fault, it’s just—I know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He reaches a hand up to his hair again, then catches himself and self-consciously shoves the errant hand in his jeans pocket. “Yeah, so—it’s fine. I’ll get over it.”

“Okay, you were doing so well and then you just took, like, the hardest swerve to the place where emotional incompetence lives.” She’s frowning, now, but not like she blames him either, just like she understands. He doesn’t know how to deal with her understanding. She’s great, and she has great intuition, but—he’d like to think she doesn’t understand him all the way.

(If she did, that might mean she knew how much he thinks about her, her and Lucretia, and—he can’t even think about that right now.)

“What do you mean?” he asks, frowning now also.

“The solution to having a bad feeling isn’t just to—not feel it. Like, that's not how feelings _work._ They’re things you have, and you don’t choose to _not_ have them, and you don’t make yourself guilty over having them. You choose what to do with them, and that’s what makes you.”

There’s a bit of a silence as he works through what she’s saying, then he shakes his head. “I mean, sure, but it’s not as easy as all that.”

“Oh, believe me, I know. This crew may have a bunch of smart people in it, but our emotional intelligence all combined barely even makes one person.” 

Barry snorts, looking away. “Yeah, well.” 

“I’m right,” she says, shrugging again. “Like—Merle and Davenport are maybe the most stable of all of us, and it still took them a few years to get together, right? And I know that Dav _still_ hasn’t been able to tell Merle that he doesn’t actually like the smell of those flowers he gives him every year on their anniversary.”

They both go a bit quiet at that. Davenport has been going into Merle’s greenhouse every day, recently, just for a short visit, stopping to smell those flowers. He comes out with his eyes rimmed a bit red and mumbling about allergies. 

“And Merle hasn’t told him he knows,” Barry says just to break the stillness. “I’m not sure whether that makes him sentimental or an ass.”

“Could be both.”

“Both sounds right. Sentimental ass kind of fits Merle to a t.” Another pause. “I miss him. I know he’s coming back, but—I miss him.”

“Well, I have great news for you, then.”

They both look at each other.

“Moderately non-sucky news,” Lup amends. “I’m putting together a—let’s call it a support group.”

Barry’s eyes narrow and she backtracks hurriedly. “Or let’s not, I don’t fucking care. We can call it the Emotional Dysfunction Squad, or even just the Good Times Happy Crew, like—whatever. Doesn’t matter. But we need to work through this shit before he’s back, and if I need to be the one to organize group cuddle piles, I’m gonna do it.” 

He ignores the flash of something probably unimportant that curls in him at the thought of cuddling with Lup. “I don’t know, Lup…”

“First to join gets first dibs on my left shoulder,” she coos, and Barry valiantly does not choke on air. “If you say you will do a team cuddle sesh, I can guarantee you my bony-ass shoulder will leave the _most_ primo indentation on your cheek.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” he mumbles, hoping he’s not blushing but knowing he probably is.

“That red spot from the place where my shoulder bone rests right up in your cute little dermis? Certificate of authenticity and everything. All the cool kids want one, you can be the one to get it.” She wiggles her eyebrows, definitely going for ridiculous, and he can’t really help the laugh. “Going once, twice, thrice—come on, Barold, I’m going to run out of these number words—”

“Okay, _fine,_ but, uh—I’m going to need that certificate examined by, um, a—professional.”

“Aw, Barry.” She grins once more, and it’s still not as bright as it normally is, but maybe a bit more than it was before. “Once you’ve gotten the full Lup experience, you’ll _know._ ” The smile drops, and she nudges him with the aforementioned shoulder. “But seriously, I think this’ll be good for us. All of us.”

He shifts, says lowly, “Sure,” and he doesn’t say that he doesn’t know if it’ll be good for his emotional state or not, but he _does_ know it can’t be good for his heart.

True to her word, that night they have the first of what will become many official group cuddle piles, and they don’t do much talking that first night, all too afraid that if they open their mouths they won’t like what comes out. That will go away, later, and they’ll talk about Merle and prepare themselves for the beginning of next cycle, when they will beg him to stay, but for now they relish in the feeling of warmth that spreads from every point they are in contact, and it’s not at all good but it’s a bit better.

And Barry sighs quietly as he finally gives in for once and rests his head on Lup’s shoulder, and Taako flicks his eyes up at him from his position on Lup’s lap but doesn’t say anything, and Lup’s shoulder is just as bony as promised but so nice anyway, especially when she winds a hand around his waist to tug him closer and leaves it there. His heart is pounding so hard that he wonders for a small panicked moment whether it might be audible, or whether it might show in his face—not just how flustered he is, but also how his heart sings that this is _right._

Through the haze of Lup’s warmth, he notices Lucretia huddling at the edge of the cuddle pile, looking lost and with that same small smile that isn’t a smile. 

“Luce, uh—” He chuckles awkwardly. “I mean—there’s a spot right here, if you want it.”

And the strangest thing is that, for a moment, he thinks he sees the aching longing on her face that he feels all the time for her and Lup, open and bare and raw, not really a want anymore so much as a _need,_ and he blinks with eyes wide, but then it is gone and she is still smiling.

“I’m all right where I am, thank you,” she says quietly, and two things strike him at once.

The first is that he might not know for sure whether he saw that emotion echoed in her, but that he does have enough experience pretending to be fine that he knows with absolute certainty that she is not.

The second is that, even as he coughs and says, “All right. Well, the offer is open,” and even as he knows with just as much certainty that she will never take that offer, somehow the space to his left feels that much colder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _woof_ ok this chapter was very difficult for me. i'm sorry it took so long but i spent forever just stuck on the introduction and how to not make it jarring to go from blupcretia to the merle feels fest. still not sure if i got there lol but have 3k words of me rhapsodizing anyway
> 
> i'm sure you all know what named cycle comes next? or maybe not. well. get hype, but not too much bc i am only the person i am

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! as always, my tumblr is [anuninterestingperson](http://anuninterestingperson.tumblr.com) and i am always available for yells. (with, not at preferably, but hey)


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